


3 Rounds and A Sound

by howardently



Category: My Mad Fat Diary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-17
Updated: 2015-06-16
Packaged: 2018-04-04 19:17:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4149684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howardently/pseuds/howardently
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rae and Finn have been best friends for years. So why has she suddenly disappeared?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Fourteen days. It’s been fourteen bloody days and he still hasn’t heard from her.

Once when he was nine, he’d broken his wrist on a camping trip. He’d been horsing around with Archie, racing each other over fallen logs even after his Dad had told them to stop. He’d jumped from one onto another, reaching out to grab hold of Archie’s jacket, when he’d fallen and broken his wrist. It hurt like hell, but he’d bitten his lip against the pain and refused to tell his Dad. He didn’t want to get in trouble, for one thing, but mostly it was just that you were supposed to go to your Mum when you got hurt and he didn’t have one anymore. So, he’d blinked back the tears, gritted his teeth against the pain and made it through the whole weekend without letting on to his Dad that he’d seriously hurt himself.

Nan knew within the first hour that they got back. She’d taken him directly to the hospital, and he’d gotten the cast as soon as possible, but still his wrist had never healed properly. He’d been mostly fine, he could still play guitar and footy and whatnot, but it always ached during the winter. Just this low dull pain in his wrist that was there to remind him of how stupid he’d been that summer, and no matter how he rubbed at it, or iced it or put heat on it, the pain never really went away until spring thawed the chill once again.

It hurts like that. Not the sharp crack of the break, not the throbbing that persisted until they put the cast on. Just the low dull pain that lets him know something’s not quite right with him, somewhere he’s made a mistake.

He didn’t notice right away that she was icing him out, he’s a bit ashamed to admit. It took almost a week before he figured it out. They sometimes missed each other in the comings and goings of busy university life. But they’d never, since the day they met, gone this long without speaking. It’s the dull ache, and an itching on the back of his neck. The world’s just not right without her in it.

So here he is, sitting on his cooling scooter in the chilly October air, wrist throbbing dully as he tries to still his racing heart against the nervousness that quickens his pulse. He bloody hates it, hates the fact that he’s nervous to see his best mate. But something’s obviously wrong with her and he’s finally had enough of the ache. They’re going to hash this out today whether she likes it or not.

His heart is still pounding heavily when the cold starts to seep through his leather jacket and nip at his neck, so he fights against the nerves and the nausea and makes his way up the stairs two at a time. No sense in prolonging it any further, it’s likely going to suck either way, so he might as well get it over with. He pauses outside her door to catch his breath, rubs his hands together and absently presses his thumb against his wrist, unconsciously trying to soothe the pain that never goes away. He straightens his fringe and knocks, then jiggles a little and blows into his hands for warmth as he waits.

It takes her bloody forever to open the door. Or at least that’s what it feels like. A wave of heat pours out as she swings the door open and looks him over silently, eyebrows raised. She breathes out heavily, and he’s not quite sure if it’s a sigh, but it feels like a punch in any case. She’s not exactly thrilled to see him, and she’s not bothering to hide it.

“Hey.” He says by way of greeting, still bouncing a little against the cold.

“Hey.” She replies, and this time it’s definitely a sigh. She shifts her weight so she’s leaning on the hand holding the door open, her arm out in a barrier preventing him from entering. She looks down at her bare feet and he swallows. The last time he’d shown up on her doorstop unannounced, she’d thrown her arms around him and dragged him in instantly. His wrist abruptly flares through with pain, the cold having finally sunk in to the mangled bones.

“Can I come in?” He asks, wide eyed and not hiding his frustration very well. He’s probably scowling when she looks up at him, but really what can she expect? She deserves lots of scowls for the way she’s been treating him.

Rae shrugs her shoulders and moves to the side, gesturing with one arm for him to come in. He brushes by her gruffly, getting just a little bit more into her space than he normally would, but she should know how irritated he is, right? He stalks into the living room and shifts from side to side, studying her place for physical evidence of the changes that she’s made over the last couple of weeks. This is her space, and it should reflect the way she’s chosen to get rid of him. He’s not sure what he expects to find, maybe pictures of them with him cut out or something, but everything looks exactly the same. It’s all normal- her squashy charity shop couch strewn with blankets, bookshelves crammed with tattered paperbacks and records, pictures haphazardly pinned to one wall. He feels a vague sense of disappointment, of unease. Maybe it’s easy for her to cut him out, maybe he hardly matters to her at all.

He spins back around to find Rae watching him blankly. She looks… timid, almost. Well, good. She must know what an utter dickhead she’s being and feel badly. He feels a strange tinge of unease again when he notices her hands tucked into the sleeves of her oversized sweater, and it wafts away some of his anger for a moment. He always watches her hands, they unfailingly give her away. She’s perfected the art of pulling faces that have little to do with what she’s actually feeling, but she never censors her hands, so he can tell she’s uncomfortable.

He, her best mate for the last four years, is making her uncomfortable. He feels winded by the realization, like she’s punched him right in the gut. His anger crashes back through him suddenly, and he knows his face must look a thunderhead when she swallows and shifts abruptly to sweep in front of him through the room, towards the kitchen.

“Do you want something to drink? I was just about to make tea.” She says, ducking around the corner into the little galley kitchen. He watches her back for a second, stares through the wall like he can actually see her rather than just imagine her movements. There’s the tap, she’s filling the kettle. Now the click of the stove, the clink of the ceramic on the counter. But he can’t picture what her face is doing, and he’s here to find that out, so he takes off his jacket and tosses it on the sofa, then turns into the kitchen and crosses his arms as he leans against the counter, watching her.

Rae jumps a little when she closes the cupboard door and sees him there, and he has to keep himself from wincing. This all hurts. She’s so distant, so deliberately removing herself from his physical space and he can’t figure out why. Last time, she’d swatted him with a spatula and swiped pancake batter across his cheek. She’s never been this stiff before, this determined to maintain the space between them. It’s only a few feet of counter, but it feels as solid as a brick wall.

“So, uh, how’s it going?” She asks haltingly, pulling tea bags out of their wrappers and jabbing them into the mugs. She’s not looking at him, not even turning her head in his direction.

“Oh, just great.” He replies, and it comes out as a sneer, laden with vitriol. He’d meant to maintain his cool, talk to her reasonably, but it all just hurts. “Absolutely fucking fantastic.”

“Finn…” She sighs heavily, gives an exaggerated roll of her eyes to the kitchen counter, since she still won’t look at him. She sounds annoyed with him, reprimanding. God; that pisses him off.

“Yeah, it’s all just grand. Nothing like your best mate trying to bin you to liven up an otherwise dull October.” The kettle whistles and he spins around jerkily to remove it from the burner and switch the stove off. His movements have all become stiff and sudden, and Rae flinches a bit.

She turns to look at him with deliberate slowness this time as she rolls her eyes again, her cheek twitching with disdain. Her voice is dull and cool when she speaks. “I’m not trying to bin ya.”

He looks at her hands, she’s so aloof and distant that he’s got no idea what she’s really thinking, and her hands might be the only real indicator of the truth. But she’s got one curled around a mug and the other poking at a tea bag and he can’t quite figure what it means. He takes the cup from her hand and she hastily removes it from the counter, tucks it back into her sleeve. She doesn’t want him to touch her, at least that much is clear. Even if it is fucking awful. He pours the boiling water into the mugs and Rae turns to pull the milk out of the fridge, careful to leave a barrier of space between them as she moves around him. She moves back again to pour a splash of milk into one of the mugs, rather than lean over him like she normally would. Finn closes his eyes and grimaces down at the counter for a second. This is excruciating. It’s bad enough, painful enough, that she so clearly doesn’t want to be around him, but it’s also incredibly uncomfortable to be thinking so much about the proximity of someone who you’ve always moved against with ease. He watches her with pinched eyes as she spoons sugar into both of their mugs and swirls a spoon in first one, then the other. He’s got to fix this. She’s here in the same tiny room with him, and he’s never missed her more.

“What’s going on, Rae? I haven’t seen you in two weeks! You haven’t even returned any of my calls.” He tries for soft and unthreatening, but his frustration bleeds through and makes him more accusing than he wants to be.

“I texted you yesterday!” She’s on the defensive, and he doesn’t miss it as she takes a step back to lean against the opposite counter, staking out her space. She takes a sip of tea, wincing at the heat, then crosses her arms and stares at him accusingly.

“Four bloody words! ‘Been busy, talk soon.’ S’hardly master communication!” She’s defensive; he can’t help but take the offensive. Plus it’s fucking ridiculous. No contact whatsoever for two weeks, then a text of four words. All it accomplished was letting him know that she was indeed avoiding him.

“Well, I’ve been busy!” She raises her shoulders and waves a hand dismissively. She’s making that wide eyed you’re-a-bloody-idiot-and-you-don’t-even-know-it face that he’s seen her give her mum a hundred times. It’s practically conformation that she’s hiding something. He watches her in silence for a minute, waiting to see what she falls back on when she lets that expression go. Her face changes, softens, and he thinks he can see something a bit hurt and vulnerable on her features before she tilts her head to the floor and her hair obscures her face. Her fingers fiddle with the tag on her tea bag. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I went down to the lit building the other day. I hung around for three hours, waitin’ for ya, but I never even caught a glimpse of you.” Again he tries to soften the words, make it less confrontational. He’s a bit more successful this time, but he thinks it’s mostly because it’s so fucking pathetic. He’d sat there with a coffee for her, waiting for her to get out of her one o’clock class. When she didn’t show, he’d stayed, thinking she’d just missed him or been late or something; he’d see her after her two thirty class. But she didn’t show then either, even though he was sitting right where she’d have to pass by to catch her bus. He waited another thirty minutes, hoping she was just running late, before he decided she must have snuck past him deliberately. “It was Tuesday, so I know you were there. I even checked with Archie. You were avoiding me.”

“I wasn’t avoiding ya!” Rae snaps, jutting her chin and shaking her head. She sets her mug down on the counter with too much force, and the tea sloshes out. “I didn’t know you were there! I told ya, I’ve been busy, that’s all.”

Her eyes are wide, and she’s thrusting her head forward in irritation, but he watches her hands and he knows she’s lying. Her fist is balled, nails pressing into her palm. It’s a dead giveaway. His anger slams back into him in full force once again. She’s fucking standing there lying to his face. Bad enough she’s been avoiding him, now she’s lying about it.

“Yeah? With what?” He sneers, narrowing his eyes. He’s going to catch her in this one.

“What?”

“What’s kept you so bloody busy that you haven’t had five minutes in the last two weeks to fucking ring me back? Huh?” He crosses his arms over his chest, tilts his head and gives her a smug little smile. She stares at him for a second, mouth working, then spins around so her back is to him and begins wiping frenetically at the spilled tea. Silence engulfs them, heavy and weighted. Finn starts to feel less and less smug as the silence deepens and it becomes clear that she’s not going to reply. He did catch her out on the lie, but he wonders if it might have been easier to just let it be. His wrist starts to ache again, and he moves to press it against his warm mug.

“So that’s it, then. You’re not going to say anything?” He asks, bewildered and hurt. She was just going to let him go, let their friendship go without any kind of an explanation? Doesn’t he matter to her at all? Rae shrugs without turning around, and he huffs out in the wave of pain that overtakes him. “I don’t… I don’t understand what’s going on. What’ve I done?”

“Nothing.” She says softly, and it’s muffled. Her hands still, dish towel pressed against the counter as she slumps over a bit on her palms. He shakes his head at her back, grits his teeth against the burning that’s radiating through him, the nausea that’s churning inside him. This feels more like the break, the sharp bite of agony resonant in the silence. He waits for her to turn, to say something, anything to make this feel less like the end, the end of them. But she doesn’t. She just stands motionless with her back to him, and he can’t understand anything from the curve of her back or the angle of her neck or the stiffness in her wrists. He can’t understand any of this at all.

“You’re just going to chuck me? Chuck years of friendship without even telling me why?” He chokes out, and her shoulders shift at the crack in his voice. But still, she doesn’t turn. A hot tear slips out and tracks down his cheek, and he gruffly rubs the back of his hand against his face to wipe it away. His eyes are filled with tears, and he can’t even look at her, can’t even make out the lines of her through the haze. He lifts his eyes towards the ceiling, willing the tears back in. This can’t be happening, he can’t be crying in Rae’s kitchen as she tells him they can’t be friends. He came over here to fix this, not to end it. A flare of agony shoots through him, and he spins to press his hands against the counter and wipe his cheek against the shoulder of his shirt.

He allows himself only a few seconds to regain his composure, just a brief moment to talk himself through the relative hurt of leaving in comparison to the agony of standing here. He can’t break down here, he has to hold himself up somehow long enough to get out of here, get home, get to a bar, something. He grunts and turns quickly, striding rapidly back into the living room and grabbing his jacket. He’s only got half a dozen steps until the door when he hears her voice behind him and freezes.

“Finn, wait…” Her voice is low and sad, and he turns around and meets her damp eyes. A tear slips slowly down her cheek and she absently brushes it away. She’s completely across the room, almost as far away as she can get, and he can feel every inch of the space between them. “I’m not trying to chuck ya. I’m not. It’s just…”

“What?” He pleads, stepping towards her again, breaching some of the distance. “What is it, Rae? Please tell me.”

“I…” Her mouth is working, but someone has turned the volume off. She shakes her head over and over again, rubs the back of her hands against her thighs until she’s grinding her knuckles against the fabric of her jeans. Her eyes are enormous when they’re filled with tears this way, and he feels so fucking helpless. “I can’t.”

Then she’s crying in earnest, head bowed under some invisible strain. He’s discouraged and confused and hurting all over, but he finds himself stepping out of his emotions in the familiar instinct to be her strength when she’s faltering. He’s the best version of himself in moments like this, the man who he thinks he might someday become. It’s only when she lets go enough to let him carry her a little, to let him step in and support some of her weight, that he ever really believes that he is strong. That he can be enough.

So he drops his jacket on the floor and goes to her. His body takes over, and all the injuries he’s sustained in this place today recede into the background. Rae is crying, Rae needs him. He extends his arms, intending to wrap her up and hold her together, but she flinches as his fingertips graze her shoulders. Then she steps backwards out of his grasp.

“No.” She says, tears streaming down her face. Her eyes are unfathomably sad, and all the good parts of him are beaten back by his frustration and his anger.

“Rae!” He demands, and his voice is too loud but he doesn’t even care. It feels like roaring, and it feels good. He’s not going to just let this go. He came here to find out what’s going on. “Why won’t you let me touch you? You have to let me touch you!”

“I can’t. I can’t.” The words are mangled with the force of her tears, and she’s shaking her head again and again.

It’s too much. He can’t stand it anymore, so he moves to breach the unknowable distance between them. She puts her balled fists up, the edges of her sleeves still gripped in her palms, but he pays no mind and wraps himself around her, crushing her arms against him. He rests his cheek against her hair, breathes in her familiar scent. She’s stiff beneath him, keeping her arms as a barrier, so he rocks her back and forth gently.

“I can’t, Finn. I can’t.”

“Shhh.” He closes his eyes, hums a comforting noise in her ear. He shifts his weight from foot to foot, and somehow, it works. She softens in increments, the tension draining from her shoulders, her head pressing against his chest, her arms dropping to her sides. He holds her, keeps her firm within the stronghold of his arms, and slowly her sobbing subsides. After an eternity, she wraps her arms around him with slack limbs. It’s not enough, not nearly enough, but he’ll take it.

He rubs his cheek against her hair, smoothes his palm up and down her the furrows of her sweater and considers. “What did I do?” He whispers into the soft moment.

She makes a sound like a sigh before pulling back. He doesn’t release her, can’t let her go beyond where he can reach her, but he shifts his torso so they can look at each other. Her hands slide from his back to his biceps and he notices that she still hasn’t unclenched them.

“Nothing.” She closes her eyes, then looks at the carpet beside their feet.

“What did I do, Rae? I want to fix it. Fix this.” He whispers again, trying to imbue it with as much sincerity and tenderness as he can muster with such a heavy heart.

She shakes her head, looks away; looks everywhere but at him. So he ducks his head until she’s forced to meet his steady gaze. She tilts her face down, tries to break the contact, but he clenches his hands against her back. His heart starts to beat faster suddenly as she loosens her fists and presses her palms to his shoulders.

Rae closes her eyes for a moment, and then releases it on a sigh. “I’m in love with you.”

Everything freezes, stills. There’s a moment where nothing exists outside of them, outside of the liquid russet of her eyes as they scan his face, and the measured breaths that pull through his lungs.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she bites her upper lip as she pauses, and it’s an important detail but he can’t figure out why. He can’t figure out any whys. “Because I’m in love with you.”

Something cracks within him. He drops his arms from around her and steps back. She eyes the distance between them warily, but it’s lost to him in a flare of white hot agony from his wrist.


	2. Chapter 2

It’s not knocking this time, there’s no timidity. He’s pounding on her door. The hazy yellow light from the standard safety lamp on the landing blurs everything further. He’s nothing but haze and fury and pounding.

She answers the door in her bathrobe, eyes wincing as they adjust to the sudden brightness. He hates that robe. He knows she got a new one for her birthday two years ago, but she still always wears that tattered ugly thing.

“Finn?” The door’s only open a crack, and her questioning voice is fainter from the barrier. He pushes against the door, and she steps back with a bit of alarm on her face as he enters. “What are you doing here?”

She doesn’t shut the door behind him, despite the heady wall of chill that enters the room and creeps into all the warm corners. It feels like a metaphor; it feels like his life recently. Tendrils of iciness, tentacles even, sneaking and slipping into all the previously warm and comfortable parts of him until he’s all blue lips and chilled veins and cold empty darkness.

“I am so fucking mad at you, Rae.” He hisses, spinning in a too wide circle to face her from his position in the center of the room. The room is dark, only the light above the stove on. She was sleeping, he’s aware suddenly, but it does nothing to dim his anger. In fact, it spurs it further. Here he is, guts ripped open, drinking himself blind every single night and she’s fucking sleeping.

She sighs from her spot by the door, and her feet are bare and on the tile and he knows they must be freezing. So he stalks back and shuts the door, brushes by her intentionally to see what she’ll do. She winces as his shoulder touches hers; she actually winces and cringes away from him. Like he’s going to hurt her. It’s sobering, so instead of staying in her space, he moves back into the living room. It’s gotten much darker in her flat with the door closed, everything washed in inky pallor; he moves to turn on the side lamp, but decides at the last minute to leave it. Maybe this is a conversation to have in the dark. Maybe it will make it feel less real, hurt less. Maybe he’s imagining it all, and if he turns on the light, it will all melt away like a fever dream. God, he wishes this could all melt away.

“Are you drunk?” Her voice is soft and holds no reprimand, though he knows he deserves it. He stands by the end table, rubbing his wrist and generally hating everything.

“Not enough.” He mumbles, hisses, spits. It’s agony, all agony, and the whiskeys he’d downed in quick succession at the bar down the street have done little to dull the pain. Booze is supposed to make it hurt less. Something should make it hurt less.

He shouldn’t have picked the bar closest to her place.

“I’m so fucking mad at you.” He repeats, and turns around to scowl at her. Her face is shadowed, and all he can make out are her impossibly huge eyes. Why does she have to have such giant eyes? She’s not a baby, or a puppy. She should have regular human eyes. “You ruined it all, you ruined everything. Why did you do that?”

“I’m sorry, okay?” She yells, and his nostrils flare at her show of emotion. She throws her arms up, hands wide and open. “I didn’t want this. I don’t want this! What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to go back to normal. I want you to stop all this shit, stop saying you’re in love with me and go back to being my fucking best mate. That’s what I want.” He yells back, and it feels so good to let it out, so good to let the whiskey and the wondering bleed together and wash out into her living room. He’s so fucking angry, so fucking sick, so fucking exhausted, and all he wants is for things to be normal again.

Rae’s mouth is gaping open, and she’s leaning forward in that way that she has. Like her head has to get closer to you to let you know how stupid you are. “Well, I bloody well can’t!” She shrieks, and he lifts his hands to tug at the hair at his temples. Even from across the room, even through the darkness, he can see the red that’s flamed into her cheeks.

“Why not?! Huh? Why fucking not?!”

She turns her back to him, raises her head to the ceiling for a minute, and he just watches. Her arms are stiff, held out a bit from her body, her hands curled tightly into fists, and in the angry, itchy stillness, he catches the faintest hint of her counting. It makes him huff out an angry breath through his nose, fills him with fury that after all these years, he’s making her count again. He twists his hands together forcefully and scrubs them over his face. They stay frozen like this for a moment, each locked in their own furor, before Rae turns back towards him.

Her shoulders are curved downwards, her head low, her fingers rubbing together absently. Every inch of her radiates defeat. “Look, I know you don’t want me, Finn. I get it, okay? And I’m trying. I’m trying to let it go, not feel this so much. I am, really. I just need time.”

“Is that what you think?” He seethes, crossing the floor to get in her face. She can’t go soft on him now, she can’t just fucking give up. Why does she always do that, why can’t she ever apply some of that strength he so admires when it comes to him, to them? Doesn’t he deserve more than her disappearing on him? Doesn’t she know what that does to him? What that means for him? She’s got some fucking nerve, telling him she just needs time away from him.

She swallows when he gets in her bubble, backs up a little in the tiny entryway until her scapula hit the wall behind her. Her eyes seem even bigger up close, and a tiny spot of light from the window beside them filters in to illuminate her face. He can see every feature perfectly, read every correlating emotion. She’s not hiding anything tonight; he doesn’t need to check every expression for pretense.

“That’s what I think. That’s the truth.” She raises her head and meets his eyes dead on, and he almost smiles. There she is.

“You’re wrong.” He says, low. She shakes her head a little, opens her mouth, and he deliberately drops his gaze to her lips. She exhales, and it’s loud in the stillness that has descended, louder than the hum from the refrigerator, louder than the ticking clock above the television. It’s the only sound in the room, and he takes a step closer until their bodies are nearly touching.

“You don’t want me.” She says, squaring her jaw and gritting her teeth, and there’s no questioning, no hesitation. He looks back up, and her eyes are steely and cold. It makes him mad, that she can be so far away. He’s right here, right in front of her, and she’s still so fucking far away. She’s like ice; she’s the winter chill that seeps into his bones and sets him ablaze with agony.

He lifts a hand and slams it into the wall beside her head, all while holding her gaze, trying to shoot tendrils of fire towards her, trying to melt her frozen disconnect. “You. Are. Wrong.” He says, carefully, distinctly, softly.

She lifts her chin again, despite the shiver that he can feel emanating from her. Her chin quivers slightly, and her breath trembles in the air between their faces. He stares at her, glares, until a tear escapes and she turns her head to brush it away.

And then it snaps, the terrible tension that’s coiled so tightly between them. He presses himself into her, shoving her back into the wall until her breath escapes in a gasp. He presses his lips against hers furiously, painfully. There’s no tenderness, no affection, just a blazing need to prove to her that she’s wrong. She’s so fucking wrong. It’s not that he doesn’t want her, that’s not what’s causing this mess.

He’s the summer heat, he’s raw and blistering and painful, and he’s on a mission to make sure she gets burned. He’s exhausted with her chill, exhausted with her distance, exhausted with her need to hold herself away. He’ll make her pay for the hurt she’s inflicted, make her pay with a passion that burns beyond anything she’s ever known.

She gasps into the kiss, and he takes the opportunity to press in further, shifting until his hips butt against hers and his tongue sears into her mouth. She doesn’t touch him, she keeps her hands stiff at her sides, so he bends his knee to press between her legs, hunches over into her until all that he is forms a wall of want to shove at her. She moans softly, and her fingers uncurl, so he lifts a hand to cup the back of her neck, fingers prizing loose strands of hair from the low ponytail at the base.

She arches her back, lifts her head, and he drags his mouth from hers to sear a trail down her neck. He wishes the skin would burn behind him, that he could leave an indelible mark on her the way she has on him. He nips at her collarbone, just a bit too hard, and she groans. He grinds his erection against her feverishly, transcribing words against her that she can’t deny. He wants her. Of course he wants her. That’s not the problem, that’s never been a problem.

When her arms snake around him, he returns to her mouth and moves his hand from the wall to untie her robe. She nods through the kiss, and he roughly shoves at the fabric. His hands roam until they find the line where her tank ends over her shorts, and he tugs until finally, finally, he finds something warm beneath him. The skin of her stomach is smooth and soft and burning, and he allows his lips to curl around hers, satisfaction radiating through him. It feels like proof that somewhere in there, somewhere in her, she’s got fire too. She’s not cold anymore, he’s lit the embers inside of her. Maybe they can fix this if he can just set her ablaze the way he is.

“Finn.” She moans, and it’s sweet and soft and it makes something in him tremble, something he doesn’t want to address. So he palms her thigh, lifts her leg until it wraps around him and then she’s grunting in satisfaction and not talking anymore. He has to keep her mouth busy.

This time, she shifts her hips against his, and he’s the one groaning. In his attempts to thaw her, to set her alight, he’d forgotten that he’d be caught in it too. But he doesn’t care, he doesn’t care about anything because this is the first time in a month when not everything hurts. It feels so good, she feels so good, and nothing has felt good in such a long time. He can feel himself slipping, getting lost in the fire that’s roaring hotter and brighter.

She tugs at his shirt, and it’s lost too. He pulls at her hair, slides his fingers over the skin at her shoulders. The straps are lost. Her fingers sear lines across his back, skate underneath his waistband to cup at his arse. He somehow shifts them, through the frantic kissing, through the haze that’s completely overtaken him, and they make it through the doorway to her bedroom and stumble towards the bed. His hands are beneath her shorts, tracing the lace of her knickers when their legs bump against the bed. A wave of chills wash through him, and he starts to step back, but Rae mumbles yes against his lips and pulls away to remove her top.

He’s standing there, panting, trying to catch his breath when her scorching fingers start to undo his belt. But it’s cold in her room, and he’s suddenly very aware of what he’s doing. He moves to stop her hands, but she glances up at him, eyes big and wet and smoldering.

“I don’t care.” She says, and the sex in her voice makes his skin dew. “I want you. I don’t care.”

He pulls the belt from his jeans in one swift movement, and her hands shove his pants down as he reaches for her again. He runs his fingers over the smooth skin of her hips, across the slope of her back, tugs until her chest is pressed up against his. He holds her there for a moment, despite her wriggling hips, then slants his mouth back over hers. He paws at her breasts, molding her flesh to the contours of his hand, thumbing at her nipples until she arches into his touch. He shoves her shorts down, and they stand together in their underwear, the temperature rising again as their bodies move against each other.

Then he knows she’s lost too, as her fingers scramble over his back and her hips grind against him and her tongue slashes over his. She pulls away suddenly and tugs off her knickers, then his boxers. She doesn’t stand coyly, doesn’t blush or stare like he’d imagined she might in this moment. She palms him roughly, glides her hand over his cock.

“Does that feel good?” She murmurs, and that’s when the heat overtakes him. He pushes her onto the bed.

“Condom?” He asks, and she reaches into the drawer of the bedside table and pulls out a silver packet. He doesn’t think about who’s been in her bed, doesn’t think about who’s been in his. He doesn’t think about anything but exploring the core of her, finding out if the fire burns as hot in her as he thinks. His fingers tug at her thighs, slip over her center until they’re inside of her. She moans, and he can hear the crinkle of the foil as she crushes it in her clenched hand. He grunts in satisfaction, she’s alight for him. It’s all he’s wanted, all he wants is to be able to touch her, to keep her.

“Oh God.” She murmurs, then grabs his wrist. “Please. Please. I want you.”

He shifts until he’s over her, glides against her wetness until she moans again. And then he’s inside of her. He doesn’t pause to savor the moment, doesn’t stop to check in with her. He kisses her, thrusts again and again until she cries out beneath him. He thrusts again and again, roughly, rubs his stubble over her hot cheeks, until finally he’s overcome.

He flops over until he’s lying next to her, and their damp bodies stick together uncomfortably. The light from the safety lamp slashes through her window and he’s never noticed before how much it illuminates the room. His room is pitch at night, but hers is amber and navy. They’re both panting softly, and it’s alive somehow in the room. Their breaths are living when the night has stolen everything else.

Rae tugs at his arm, and he shifts it until she can lie curled up against him on her side, her cheek pressed against his chest. He nuzzles her hair absently and stares up at the ceiling as their bodies cool. After a while, she shivers and bends to pull a blanket over them.

A cricket chirps shrilly from somewhere in the flat, and he thinks about how dry his throat is and whether he can get up and go get a drink. The kitchen feels far, too far, but maybe he can drink from the tap in the bathroom. He can’t remember if the sink is too low for that. Rae moves, and there’s a sting where their skin pulls apart. He moves his arse down, wriggles a little to try and get comfortable. He’s got one arm extended where she’s next to him, the other bent to rest on his chest. He wonders if he’s covering his heart. He wonders if he’s still got a heart.

She settles with her head resting on his bicep, rather uncomfortably, and only the skin at the curve of her hip touches him. She’s got her arms bent up, clutching at the blanket over her chest. He’s cold where the blanket doesn’t cover him, and his mouth feels sour from the whiskey he’d nearly forgotten about. Shouldn’t it have worn off in all that? Why can he still feel it slowing his blood and dulling his head?

They both stare up at the ceiling in silence for a time; he doesn’t know how long, but it feels substantial. He waits for her breathing to deepen, for his to deepen, for either of them to give in to the hour and fall asleep. It would be a relief, to escape this moment, escape the pressure of her head on his arm and his hand on his chest.

“That didn’t feel like a beginning.” She says, quiet and sad.

He freezes, and she shifts her head at the rigidity of his muscles. He takes a deep breath and turns until he’s facing her, pulling his arm from underneath her and tucking it behind his own head. She turns on her side too, tucks her elbows up to mirror his pose. He studies her for a long moment, watching for traces of the ice that he’s been bitten by so often lately, but she’s warm still. Warmth and softness bleed out of her and leech into him across the mattress.

“No.” He says simply, meeting her eyes until shame overtakes him. He looks down at the space between them on the bed, at the edge of her hopeful purple duvet. “I’m sorry, Rae.”

He can hear her sniffle, but he doesn’t look up. The tears streaking down her face are bad enough in his head. He twists his wrist beneath his head, because it’s cool in her room and it hurts again and the twisting sharpens the ache from a dull pain to a dull agony. He wants to turn away, he wants to put his pants back on and leave like he’s done a dozen times to a dozen different girls, but he can’t. This is Rae that he just fucked, and he’s got to face it.

So he makes himself look at her face, makes himself see the tears filling her eyes that she’s not bothering to hide. She looks at him like she’s more disappointed in him than she’s ever been before, and he feels it down to the very core of him.

“Why?” She says, and though it’s only one syllable, it’s broken by the quiet sobs that have overtaken her. It takes everything he has not to reach out and wipe those tears away, not to pull her into his arms like he’s done a thousand times before when she’s cried. “Why did you come here tonight? Why did you… if…” She shakes her head, squeezing her eyes shut and turning her face away like it’s too painful to bear.

“I don’t know.” He murmurs, and he clenches the blanket in his fist. “I shouldn’t have.”

Her face screws up, and she turns her head towards the ceiling again. He can tell she’s trying to hold in the sound of the sobs that are racking her body. The mattress shakes with them. He can feel the vibrations in his own chest.

It hurts. It hurts so fucking bad that he can barely stand it.

“I just… I can’t stand being apart from you. I hate it so much, Rae. I fucking hate it.”

“But you don’t love me.” Her voice is soft but strong, not shaking like his anymore. She sounds empty, like she’s a thousand miles away again, and he wants to shake her, fuck her again, do anything to bring her back. “Not like that.”

“I…” He starts, but it peters off as he realizes that he doesn’t know what the rest of the sentence should be. It’s a big thought, one that should shake him, but he’s tired and aching and guilty and he just doesn’t have room for that kind of epiphany in his head. “I don’t know.”

She moves to lie on her back again, and he watches the side of her face carefully. He wants her to cry, he wants her to scream, he wants her to do anything. But she’s blank. Her eyes are dull and glazed as she stares up at the ceiling.

“If you don’t know, then you don’t.” She says, like it makes perfect sense, like it’s the logical conclusion to this whole fucked up equation. It’s infuriating, her stillness, her disconnect from the moment, from the problem, from him.

He rolls to his back, glares up at the steady yellow triangle above him. He rubs at his wrist again, and for a long time they stay that way. Then slowly; painfully, haltingly slowly; he moves his hand across the empty blanket between them and takes hers. She starts a bit, but she doesn’t jerk away, though her fingers stay stiff beneath his.

“It wasn’t that long ago that you didn’t know either.” He says, and it’s the first thing that’s made sense to him in a long time. “Just… just…” He sighs. “I need some time, maybe. And you. I still need you. Can you please, just… stay.”

Nothing moves in the flat. He listens to her breathe, they hear the ice turn over in the refrigerator. The cricket stops it’s song. And Rae’s fingers loosen, then turn to twine with his.


End file.
